EthHub Weekly #161
Berlin live this week, Immutable X now live, dYdX layer 2 now public, Metaverse Index launched and much more!
Curated by Anthony Sassano (@sassal0x) and Eric Conner (@econoar)
đ©đȘÂ Berlin is Coming
Are you ready for Ethereumâs next network upgrade? Well you should be because itâs coming this week at block number 12,244,000 (April 15th). Be sure to read the official announcement post here and upgrade your nodes to a Berlin-supported version if you havenât yet! You can also keep track of the upgrade progress and watch the countdown timer here.
Last Friday I had the honor of filling in for Ryan Sean Adams on Banklessâ weekly rollup which you can watch here and next week Iâll be talking about Ethereum at Blockchain Week in Australia - register here.
Have a great week everyone!
-Â Anthony
News of the Week
âïžÂ Fidelity, Coinbase, Square Form Crypto Council to Lobby Policy Makers
 group of major companies, including Fidelity, Coinbase, and Square, have formed a crypto council to lobby policy makers.
The Crypto Council for Innovation has a stated mission of demonstrating the "transformational promise of crypto and communicate its benefits to policymakers, regulators, and people around the globe." The Wall Street Journal first reported the news.
Crypto venture capital firm Paradigm is also an initial member of the council. Paradigm co-founder Fred Ehrsam told the WSJ that crypto is at a "mainstream inflection point."
"It's in its very early stages and, much like the internet (once was), it's very fragile while it's in that stage," he said.
"It's challenging because policy makers want to balance risk and reward, and even people who spend time in this space would struggle to predict where this will go in the coming decade. It was very hard to say where the internet was going to go."
đ±Â Coinbase Reports an Estimated $1.8 billion in Total Revenue for Q1 2021
Coinbase reported an estimated $1.8 billion in total revenue for the first quarter of 2021.
That figure was included in Coinbase's estimated financial results, published on Tuesday afternoon. The figures accounted for the three months ending March 31, 2021.
Among the other estimated numbers: $335 billion in trading volume. That's compared to the $89 billion in volume it posted for Q4 2020. Coinbase also reported net income of "approximately $730 million to $800 million" for the period.
Coinbase said it had an estimated 56 million verified customers and 6.1 million monthly transacting customers
Project Updates
Whatâs New in Eth2 - 10 April 2021
Benâs latest eth2 roundup including updates on the Beacon Chain, the merge, links to explainers, media stuff and more.
Ethereum Cat Herders Update #41
An updated roadmap for Stateless Ethereum, Verkle tree migration, Epoch based state expiry scheme, Merge Implementers meeting and more!
Immutable X Now Live
StarkEx-Powered Immutable X is now on Ethereum Mainnet, providing NFT minting and trading at scale. Immutable X â the first L2 platform for NFTs â offers unmatched scalability, near-instant UX, as well as affordable minting & trading.
ENS on Layer 2 MVP
This end-to-end MVP is the first instance not just of resolving an ENS name using a layer 2 solution but also the first demonstration of an entirely new system for trustless communication between applications on layer 1 and different layer 2 solutions.
dYdX Layer 2 DEX Now Public
dYdXâs layer 2 cross-margined perpetuals are available to the public on mainnet Ethereum, powered by StarkWare and settled in USDC.
L2 Beat Launched
L2 Beat is a website that tracks and analyses the growth of various layer 2 protocols on Ethereum.
Instadapp Protocol & Governance Detailed
This update explains how the Instadapp team intends to roll out the INST governance & token and the key upgrades for the DSA.
Introducing MetaMask Institutional
MetaMask Institutional enables institutional investors to engage in DeFi with the worldâs most trusted Ethereum wallet.
TCAP Launched
TCAP is the worldâs first total crypto market cap token which gives users exposure to the entire cryptocurrency market cap.
Slingshot Live on Polygon
The Slingshot decentralized exchange aggregator is now live on the Polygon network in beta.
Metaverse Index Launched
The Metaverse Index (MVI) is a basket of 15 tokens, designed to capture the trend of entertainment, sports and business shifting to a virtual environment.
Christieâs to Auction Off CryptoPunks
9 rare CryptoPunks from Larva Labsâ own collection will star in Christieâs 21st Century Evening Sale this May in New York.
Direct Deposit Module (D3M) introduced
D3M enables DAI minting directly into Aave Protocol by using aDAI as collateral in the D3M Vault by minting and burning DAI based on liquidity needs and market opportunities in Aave Protocol.
Gnosis Auction Announced
Gnosis Auction is the new platform for fair, transparent, and decentralized token price discovery on Ethereum.
Set Protocol V1 Deprecation
Sets built on v1 of the Set Protocol system are being deprecated so that if you hold any of these legacy Sets you are encouraged to either sell or redeem them.
Interesting Tweets
Ecosystem Bits
Blog Posts
Why Sharding is Great (recommended read)
Five Theses About Transaction Ordering, MEV, and Front-Running
Podcasts
Scaling DeFi with dYdX and StarkWare - Bankless
Mark Cuban on Why He Thinks ETH Is a Better Store of Value Than Bitcoin - Unchained
zkEVM & zkPorter with Matter Labs - Zero Knowledge
Misc
Meme of the Week
Looking for Work?
Top jobs listed on Cryptocurrency Jobs this week:
Backend Engineer - Maple Finance
Embedded Firmware Engineer - GridPlus
Front-End Web Developer - Ethereum Foundation
Full-Stack Developer (Senior) - Ethereum Community Fund
+1000âs more on the Cryptocurrency Jobs website!